Learning to make change together

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About the approach

​We live at a time of profound change - a tipping point between one world and another. The very worldview through which we see, make sense of and relate to the world, each other, and even ourselves is changing. ​For many people there are deep shifts in, for example, the meaning of democracy ​​and how to participate it in responsibly​​​, our relationship with our ​physical environment, and even how we think of history or our own identities​. ​

Whether we do so consciously or not, we are engaged in a pivotal moment for determining what relationships between the Self and Other will become the building blocks of our sciences, spiritualities, social systems, and human systems. ​​

​The tasks at hand ​include addressing immediate and serious needs in the near term, and to ever-more consciously and intentionally forge -- or cobble -- together ​new ways to order our lives together. ​This work is happening ​​as communities of varying types and scales are learning to build the world they want to live in with each other. Growing awareness of this transformative process begs, as Ed Whitfield of the Fund for Democratic Communities puts it, that we learn how to think together.

​We Tip the Balance is a place to attempt to distill - and learn about in the process - ​theories and ​strategies emerging from contemporary thought and social movement. ​Here there is room to collect and compile clues from the daily struggles we witness and​ try to discern from them where we will need to go - who we will need to learn how to collectively become - if we are to survive the morass of social and environmental challenges facing humankind. We Tip the Balance​ offers a way of thinking about and engaging in ​social change that:

starts with the human desires, fears and sense of duty ​that make ​politics personal

is accessible and “calls in” those for whom participation in social change is new

honors and studies the history of social struggle

centers contemporary forms of social struggle as reference points

sees it as a practice with various forms, types and orders of change that we can ​learn about together

The process of engaging in this collective work also transforms us as individuals.

We Tip the Balance supports a personal process of change...

From

knowing or assuming what you should be doing

being overwhelmed by the rate, direction and extent of change

doing whatever you can even if it doesn't feel like it's making a difference (and the exhaustion that brings)

attempting to understand the world as it is (and maintaining it along the way)

compromising on a daily basis

To

talking, listening and learning about what you could be doing

having the tools and skills to grapple with changes as they come

finding strategic and meaningful roles for yourself in the work you see ahead

becoming a practitioner of change and a contributor to our conscious becoming

living the power of your convictions

​This process will also​ transform our understanding of change itself. After all, we are embarking on change processes that, if not wholly new, are unfamiliar in fundamental ways. It makes sense that, living at a time of profound change, our understanding of change might well deepen, transform, or become more complex.